Defining Your End Goals Before You’ve Even Started

Okay, so that may sound like a bit of an oxymoron, but this little piece of information is going to be key to any kind of success you may want to see. I’m personally a big believer in working your way backwards; as in knowing what you want, and then building in reverse the steps you have to take to ensure you create a strategic road map to your ambitions.

Why are we talking about this? Because so many times we see our friends and colleagues (and yes, we’ll totally raise our hands to this) just throw themselves, or their productions, out there into the big bad world with no real clue of where they’re trying to go. They jump in with the mentality that “someone else will figure it out for me”, or “if I make it people will come” or even “I’ll do a Charlize Theron and get discovered in my local bank”.

Well sure, for that 0.00000001%, that’ll work and if you truly believe that is your path, then more power to you! But if you’re like us, and if you’re tired of waiting for that phone to ring, for that producer to “discover” you, for anybody else to give you the validation to do what you want to do with your life… then it’s time to hone in on your end goal, it’s time to establish your game plan, and it’s time to make it happen for yourself!

When we decided to take a step back at the end of 2016, to re-evaluate our goals, and to make sure what we were doing was in alignment with our big picture, we’re not going to lie, it took us a little bit of time. Aside the fact that an Atlantic Ocean and some dodgy internet was in the way, we realised that we needed to get excruciatingly specific in order to ever successfully share our vision with the world, let alone another human being. When I say excruciatingly specific, I mean we really had to have a hard honest look in the mirror, be brutally honest with ourselves and identify our strengths and weaknesses. We then set a highly detailed plan into motion to eliminate as many of those weaknesses as possible (which resulted in one of us going back to school, to name but a few!).

Now, we’re not saying you have to go to those extremes – although frankly, we don’t think it could hurt – but we do think that if you’re feeling a little bit like an aimlessly wandering nomad, this blog post is for you.

We know that time is a currency more valuable than money (trust us – it totally is) and so we’re working on a little something special that’ll help you break all this down in no time at all (and yes, it’ll be free!). However, below is just a simple example of how you can breakdown your end goals into a easy, visible, manageable prospect!

Name: John Snow

End Goal: Take A Feature Film To Cannes

Role: Director/Writer

Current Status: Post-Production of a 15 Minute Short

Yup, this is totally basic and there’s a thousand and one other things that go into this “map”, but at least it gives you a semi-clear idea of certain steps you may need to take in order to achieve your dreams.

So we challenge you, you #DirtyBadass, to take an afternoon off sometime this week and create your own Road Map to success. You’re going to come across oh so many hurdles to achieve your dreams, so make sure that you and your lack of “strategic planning” isn’t one of them.

XxXx

Ps. And about that “freebie” – more information coming soon!

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About The Author

The Dirty Filmmaker is an online resource centre for any micro-budget and no-budget filmmakers. We aim to aid and inspire these creatives while they design their next ingenious production, helping them reach the next step on the entertainment career ladder.